That REALLY escalated fast. (Hoosjim's 14th)

[25yearsmlc]

Jim

not to quibble, truly. I'm sure you 've researched this but since I'm 55 or over, I can remarry and not lose my half of x's pensions.

Nor should i, considering how much I schlepped and gave up to move for him at least 9 times, 12 if you count moves under 100 miles.

So if you remain married till she's 55...she'd lose nothing by remarriage

OR if she leaves sooner, and does not remarry, she loses nothing. I am not saying this is purely transactional for her.

But I noticed in my divorcecare class, in which most of us are processing broken hearts,

there are a FEW women who seem to come just to gauge the pros and cons of staying married - and it's not about their emotional fears or needs.

They are looking to see if the grass is greener AND OR to figure out the best timing for them to make their move and leave.

it creeps me out, frankly.

OTOH, anyone considering a divorce would be nuts not to do the math of it.

All I'm saying is Just keep your eye on the finances and protect yourself.

[hoosjim]

Holy cow.

There's just no way, just none, whatsoever, that God did not intend for us to find this particular counselor. That she gets each of us, just completely understands where we are coming from, and can weave her guidance into what we know and believe and in a way that speaks from faith and to our faith individually, is nothing short of a miracle. IF God is going to work a miracle, here, as I am thinking is increasingly likely, she is going to be a major component to it (as, also, will be my experiences here). She is such a blessing. As are y'all.

Thanks for caring, and for being here. Ima go "radio silence" until Easter morning. From pretty much everyone except my one close friend and the Almighty. I have a lot of thinking, and praying, to do.

Happy Easter everyone!




And to clarify, I just had an IC session right now, not a joint MC session. So don't worry, I didn't go crawling back...

[SteveLW]

WWs don't like to give things up. I think you said you're a lawyer. I'm guessing she doesn't make nearly as much money as you do. I bet you have a nice house. Drive nice cars. You can afford gym memberships. She'd be walking away from a sitch that most women would kill for.

I'm a lawyer, yes. But a lawyer who works for the govt. And who has major medical bills. And who has two kids in college (almost) And who lives in a major metro area that is VERY expensive, and who crashed his finances during the dotcom crash and thus got a VERY late start on the career savings front... So we are not really doing all that hot, certainly not in comparison to the average demographic around here.

I can afford the gym membership, and the occasional vacation (the Cancun thing was going to be a splurge), but, while i do drive a BMW, it is 13 years old with 130,000 miles on it. And a cracked windshield where my Tourettic son kicked it from the inside during a fit W does drive a fairly nice car but nothing extravagant. First World problems, i know, but, at least by the metric in our town, we are not "affluent".

Nonetheless, i don't doubt you are right about the dynamic. OM is a tow truck driver, in the same metro area, so living with/off him would definitely be a step down.

OTOH she would be entitled to a share of my federal pension as long as she didn't marry the clown... Which is why if things go sideways i have vowed to myself to either a) fight it till there is nothing left to give to her or b) quit before my retirement vests and become a beach bum. No way in hell i'd ever let that SOB realize the benefit of anything i've made.

Unfortunately, from my experience and what I've read, WWs often trade down. My wife's OM in her EA was unemployed and had a criminal record. (I once joked that I could just imagine her taking him home to her dad, who is very discriminating about people's job prospects!) The second guy that I thought was OM2 (and may have been on the way to that) is a security supervisor in FL, makes about 1/3 of what I make.

From other reading I've read that the OM is usually a step down, for whatever reason. (I am not meaning to sound as arrogant as I am sounding, but to go from a guy that has been very successful, to a guy with a GED (OM1) and a high school grad with no college (OM2) is at least a financial step down.)

Regardless, even WWs are logical to a point and know that their OM may not be the provider their H is, and also that D will mean financial stress and less stability moving forward.

[sandi2]

Nothing like a cliffhanger. . Happy Easter to you, too. I hope you can share more with us soon. It sounds as if you have a decision to make. I pray you will be given wisdom to know the next step to take. ((hugs))

[hoosjim]

Well, so much for the "Take it slow" plan. :-/

[sandi2]

Do you enjoy teasing?

[Ginger1]

Well, so much for the "Take it slow" plan. :-/

I have a feeling that my prediction that she would break out the “big guns” has happened.....

Didn’t want to say it out loud earlier, but she had a card she had held onto very very tightly and I knew she was going to use it!

[hoosjim]

Not even really sure where to begin. Crazy few days.

I guess it really started in the middle of the week. We each had individual sessions with the counselor. My wife apparently had three, no, actually four, all on her own. Which I didn't even know about until Friday. But during this time, my wife was breaking down. Like, really breaking down. Perhaps close to suicide watch-type stuff. I was largely oblivious due to having left the house without leaving a forwarding address/location.

On my end, I had been talking to the MC/IC and just trying to think, pray, clear my head, and figure out my way forward. I was staying in hotels and bouncing around location-wise, but, other than that, leading a pretty good life. Eating well (Actually, eating GREAT-- treated myself to the best restaurants within reason and without breaking the bank), working out, hanging out with friends. But I did not forget about what had happened two Saturdays ago, and did not stop thinking about where I wanted to "go" from there.

My counselor was a great source of help and support during this week-- she is truly a blessing from God. She advised me, amongst other things, to take care of myself, and to consider well but not to longly where I wanted to go. She said that the moment that I was in... that WE were in... was a pivotal moment, and that, in her experience and opinion, the potential paths forward started diverging sharply at this point. She said that she had been waiting months for us (W and me) to get to this point... meaning for me to get fed up enough to actually walk out for good, and for my W to understand and believe that I would actually do just that and that she could and actually probably was going to lose me over all of this. She said that we HAD to get to this point in order to have any hope of moving forward... whether together or separately. She said that W was in turmoil, and bereft, that she had feelings flooding back for me that were genuine, but that she knew that she had messed up horribly-- both recently and over the duration of this situation-- and that she was scared and that she should be scared. She (MC/IC) said she could understand what I was feeling, that I had had enough, that I was hurt and betrayed and that even though I still had feelings for W that I didn't know if I could ever trust her even if she threw herself at my feet and promised the world. She said a bunch of other stuff, too... too much to write it all down, but the bottom line is is that she to all appearances has an uncanny ability to "see" into both me and W. Don't know if that is due somewhat to her own personal background which she has filled us in on and does not make a secret of, or if she is just really darned good at what she does. Or both, IDK. Anyway, she really seems to "get it" and to get "us", and she explains things so well in terms of our Christian faith, and drawing on examples from scripture and our own individual spiritual journeys weaving it into and out of our situation, in a way that makes everything seem so clear. But, at the same time, without pressuring us towards a particular goal: "You need to decide what YOU want... for you and for this MR, and what you can and cannot accept if you decide to save the latter." Until Saturday, I was thinking that there was nothing to save... and nothing I would accept.

Friday, I had IC with the counselor in the morning. I filled he in on how I was doing. She said she was glad I was doing well, and glad that I was able to get away to clear my head. She wanted to broker a discussion between me and W that afternoon, to talk about a couple of things. 1) what the ground rules would be going forward for our interactions... if and when I would come home and under what circumstances (I had not pushed the "you must leave the house" position with W, though Friday was the day I had originally given her 6 days prior) 2) In particular, what the ground rules would be for Sunday, where I had told her I wanted to be with my boys on Easter (the original plan, before last Saturday's events, had been for W and I and S18 to go visit S19 at his college, go to church and have brunch), and 3) Whether or not I had any interest in moving forward with the MR beyond Sunday-- without any commitment to what that would look like-- I had told her I still had feelings for W, but just didn't see how this would ever work or how I could ever trust W again.

Friday evening I was supposed to leave town for the weekend to hang with my friend an hour south of here. MC asked me to be available for first few minutes of wife's IC session at 4 PM so we could talk about the above, so I rigged my laptop up in the car. Counselor ended up locking herself out of her office, and then there was an unfortunate stretch of technical difficulties with the three-way video session such that we didn't get started until 5:30, 90 minutes late, by which time my already distraught wife was in near total breakdown mode. She was in tears pretty much whole time I was on. W said it was good to hear my voice. (We had not spoken since i said "hey" to her Sunday night when I was in house to retrieve clothes). We established that I was going to attend church with her and boys, and sit next to them at church, but that that was not a commitment on my part to anything other than wanting to be with them on Easter. We also established that I would come home on Sunday, after church, and that we would talk "for an hour or two" but that was also not a commitment that I would "stay" or that there would be anything further between us.

[On the matter of W being "kicked out", I had talked to MC earlier in the week, Wednesday, and she took issue with me threatening that. "I know that you are 'done' with this" she said "and you are absolutely justified in feeling that way... and in walking out, and I am actually glad that you did because you two needed to get to that point, BUT... you know you can't force her to leave the house, right? I just don't think it's a very useful or helpful threat on a number of levels. It gets the focus in the wrong place and risks her digging her heels in rather than focusing on her loss of YOU, it needlessly burns bridges, and you end up looking weak when she realizes, which she will, that you can't force her to leave". So, Friday, on the "joint" part of the call I was like "look, I need to be away now and by myself and figure some things out, and I can't do that in that house, where we were married, and where I feel so betrayed. I'm not going to kick you out, but we will need to figure out living arrangements going forward in the near future. I honestly don't know if I am going to want to be in that house, with or without you."]

After we had discussed and committed to all of that, about 15 mins or so, MC then slipped in the idea that "look, if you two are going to see each other on Sunday, and be there for your sons, it is going to be really emotional on several levels seeing each other for the first time after a week, and having left each other the way you did when you parted. Do you want that to play out in front of your sons? I would suggest that you both find a time to get together privately for an hour or so ahead of time-- is there somewhere the kids can go that morning to give you some time? It would be even better if you could find some time tomorrow (Saturday) to get together, maybe have a cup of coffee or take a walk and just talk a bit about what we've just discussed. Get used to each others' company." Me: "I'm going away for the weekend to be with friends. My buddy has to work Saturday morning, though. I suppose I could drive halfway back and meet her for an hour." So we agree that W will find the mass time on Sunday, and I will find the time and place for us to meet Saturday. MC then asks what the ground rules for Saturday will be? We decide, "no preconceptions, don't hide any emotions, don't hold anything back."

On the drive down Friday night (the delay in the counseling session pushed back my workout which pushed back my departure and complicated my dinner plans-- it being lent and all I had to settle for a large Wendy's fries and a protein shake) I text (so I think) my friend to whose house I am travelling and say "running late, sorry", then "Now passing the infamous ___________ fitness club" (the spot where my W met OM last week). Then I immediately realize that I texted not my friend, but my W who is currently "stickied" at the top of my messenging app. Feeling bad for being snarky and for openly discussing her presumed infidelity with someone, after having a civil and somewhat productive session, I text her again: "Sorry for that, it was uncalled for. I am just hurt, still, and angry, and venting, but we don't need to be trashing each other to friends, especially if we are going to be civil and move past this... in whatever direction." She texts back "I know. It's okay. I brought it on myself." So I text her "Mercury retrograde, I told ya." Her: "You sure did". Me: "And now its a full moon, too. Prolly just oughta lock ourselves in a closet for a couple days." Of course, I didn't mean together, but, now, her: "I'm game, you..." Which somehow leads gradually into this near full-on phone sex exchange between us, which just seems to flow amazingly naturally, like no communication we'd ever really had before... until I put a stop to it: "Stop! This can't be all physical... if we even do it at all... and you know it! And I've thought about it, trust me. THIS IS NOT HELPING!" Her: "I know, but we gotta start somewhere." Then: "Sorry, fwiw this was very nice..." Me: "Yeah. Look, I didn't say so explicitly on the call today, but I really had intended this weekend to be about me and my space and maintaining radio silence. Im already sacrificing some of that to meet you tomorrow morning so... please give me that space." Her: "K. Sorry."

I get to my friend's, hang out Friday night. He has grown amazingly zen, again. For color, at about the time of his own BD from his WW, he became a born again Christian... completely out of the blue. It was an overnight transformation for someone who has a genius-level intellect, an associated level of arrogance--at least prior to his conversion--and who had previously been an avowed atheist. He went a bit too far to the "love and forgive all" side and got walked on for a long time by his no X-W but, in the end, ended up in a committed relationship with his W's AP's W, and they are still together, and it is definitely a "trade up" for him in pretty much every respect, as well as for her- the two cheaters ended up together and the two jilted people-- both the more attractive and successful of the respective pairs-- ended up together. His now X-W is also my W's erstwhile bff whom I have discussed here extensively. AAR, he, completely comfortable in his own sitch, continually asks me: "What do you want, and what are you willing to accept? Do you still want her, and why do you think this sudden change in her might NOT be legit." Also: "Are you overthinking things?" (Which mirrors my own MC/IC's advice: "Don't overthink things-- Do you remember when you became a Christian? Do you remember why? What it felt like? Why did you believe and why do you? Don't forget those things as you go through this... and I mean that not just in the context of your faith but in the context of your marriage and your relationship with your W and whether or not you choose to trust and believe in her and in the MR ever again."

So later we go out drinking and listening to live music. Not a lot of alcohol, but enough so that when I get home I am thinking of W and our texts. And then somehow I "butt text" her... send her a blank text. Still not sure how that happened. This is 3AM. Then, strangely her: "Did you just text me". Me (still not understanding what happened): "No." then "Oh, wait. Looks like I did. Accident. Sorry. You're awake?" Her: "Couldn't sleep. Thinking of you. Sorry but I am." Then "Have fun. I'll go. Sorry to intrude." Me: "K. Sorry if I was abrupt earlier. I hate texting sometimes." Her: "It's okay. I understand." Me (Still buzzed and thinking about earlier and feeling a bit randy and... still not sure why I did this): "Whatcha wearin'?" Her: "Your flannel shirt" [encloses selfie of herself and, ouch, it looked good, other than her eyes still being pretty puffy and red.]. Me: "So much for sleep. Look, gotta go. Get some sleep." Her: "I'll try." Me: "No promises tomorrow. Let's take this slow." Her: "I know. I heard what you said today, and I accept that."

Saturday, after a long night, I get up and drive North. I have selected, almost at random, a small town between my friend's home town and my home town, about 30 to 40 mins from each. It is a town I know of but which I have never been into, but which I found out has an old town area with a coffee shop and a "rails to trails" park and greenway. It turns out that the little town is very cozy, idyllic... even romantic. I find a coffee shop and sit down to wait. She texts me when she gets into town, and I feel a little playful so I make her "find me", which she eventually does...

(TBC, I have to go run a couple of errands. )

[artista]

This all sounds a lot like when my H took me back after kicking me out for three days... He took me back after the psychiatrist told him I should not be alone... Right after I was "suicidal." Over the next few days we had the best sex of our lives... You men are so easy...

If this goes the way my situation did, I an afraid for you... Our pastor warned us... Said we were moving too fast... He was right...

In any case, I can't wait to hear the rest...

[hoosjim]

(Continued from above...)

...So, she finds me at the small town café in the middle of nowhere. And we are like the only two people on the street. (Okay, so actually, we ARE the only two people on the street, this is a REALLY small town and it's early on a Saturday, but... I think it woulda seemed that way even with a somewhat crowded street). I kinda half smiled and she approached me, head down. And I will say this here, because it absolutely described her demeanor the entire day Saturday and again yesterday, but she was... submissive. And I know that prolly sounds chauvinistic or whatever, but I can't think of a better way to describe it. When she approached me it was shyly or hesitantly, she would stand slightly behind me if we were waiting for a table or looking at something or the like, I would take her hand and lead her and she let herself be led with no pulling or deviation, she would meet my gaze but then drop her eyes, particularly if talking about something difficult. And she was sorry. Or said so, and sounded sincere. There were no excuses-- what she did was "wrong, and stupid" and it "hurt" me, and she had been "dying inside" thinking of it. She had talked to Jessica (MC/IC) several times and had asked her if she should even come, if she shouldn't just stay away, and Jessica had said "no, you two should see each other, just for a little bit... we'll go from there, but follow his cues... he may or may not want to touch you or hold you or whatever, and you need to respect that-- what you did was a serious betrayal of trust-- you hurt him badly and he has a right to feel that way."

We walked. Down an old railbed and out of town. We talked. I took her hand to emphasize things I said, and then I held on to it because it felt right. Our fingers intertwined, just naturally. We found an old bench by the wayside. I led her to it and sat down, she next to me. She started crying and a lot came out. She had been in contact with Om for longer than just since last week. SOB hadn't waited one week past when I angrily confronted him in August. He had called my W's bff initially, feigning concern over whether I might hurt my W in anger. Later, he called her, usually on Wednesdays when he know she didn't have to see patients and would be more free to talk on phone. Sometimes, according to her, she talked to him. Increasingly, as time went on, she did not, though the never stopped completely. She said that if she saw the caller ID ahead of time, she would often just let it ring, but sometimes she would pick up, and, when she did, she would sometimes put him on hold until he hung up (which she can easily play off because she often has to 'abandon' personal calls that way due to office workload and dynamics--I am a sometimes victim of that myself) but sometimes talk to him. For a while she said she still got nostalgic about the attention, or laughed at his jokes, but eventually she grew to dread it. She knew it was wrong, but she thought it was harmless. She told herself that she was just trying to keep the peace (she thought i'd've gone after him, and I very well might've, FWIW) that it was harmless, and that she didn't have to risk hurting anyone else's feelings, that no one would know. And she feared he would come by the office (a possibility he had "mentioned", or say something about the affair to our son with whom he had been friendly-- he went out of his way to track down and talk to my son at an athletic event last fall, an incident that I told my W about at the time, and I now wonder if he meant that as a veiled threat. And so she told herself it was harmless, but she knew better. "I should have told you, I should have and I am sorry, so sorry... I don't know how you can ever forgive me, but I am sorry."

She never saw him, although he repeatedly left messages on her office voice mail telling her how much he was "into her" and how he "really hoped he could see her" and telling her where he would be on any given night. She would sometimes drive by OM's old hangout, just to see what it felt like, or maybe see if his car was there (this I already knew, though I had not told her, though obviously I knew about the Christmas shopping trip which she HAD told me about back in December), but she had not even done that since early January.

Finally, last week, on one of the few occasions she had picked up, he told her "he had joined a gym." She couldn't remember if she had told him which gym chain she was a member of, but it was the same one. There was a gym near his house, he said, and he worked out there at the same time every Saturday. That fateful Saturday, nine days ago, she decided to go before that time that he had said, thinking she would see him in passing as she left. To "prove to herself" that there was nothing there, that she could trust herself.

She had been, she said, feeling increasingly close to me. She liked the way we were starting to flirt, she thought I seemed a different person, stronger, more dominant, more protective, and she liked that too, but she also was remembering how we were when we first met, that she had loved me, how good a father I was. And she felt the pull towards me. But she didn't trust herself. She kept her walls in place

Nor had she ever trusted herself, or a relationship with any man. She had experienced years of betrayal and rejection herself. (And most of this history, I already knew though not how profoundly it affected her at least how profoundly she said it affected her.) She was dumped several times as a teen, her first three boyfriends, two for girls she thought were friends, then ostracized by her group of friends, and her teammates, blackballed by her basketball coaches because her parents wouldn't suck up or "play ball", losing her scholarship offer, then becoming pregnant the first time she ever had sex, in college, and then being rejected and called a slut and a whore by the basketball player she had slept with (and by his friends and many of her own friends because why would a star athlete lie), having nowhere to turn as the "good catholic girl", certainly not her family, she had made the biggest mistake of her life, and had an abortion. All alone. And that too haunted her. As she went forward, she had never been able to give herself fully to a relationship, never trusted herself and rarely trusted others that much to let them in. She gravitated towards abusive relationships (the dude she was in the process of leaving when we met bounced her down a flight of stairs once, and slugged her another time).

And then she met me. And I was nice, and handsome, and sweet, and soon-to-be-successful, and she was wildly physically attracted to me... Maybe too much. "You scare me", she told me on more than one occasion back then, usually as we were in each others' arms. And I did scare her. We had at least three "official" starts and stops. She had a hard time saying "he's my boyfriend" or the like, and, when we got engaged, it was after an almost exhausting "will we, wont we" courtship. And at least one breakup where she went to some other man for a short while. And by that point, my trust in her was damaged. And between the two of us we never really connected in a fully open and intimate sense that binds married couples together.

Here, now, in the present day, we on these forums know where we had gotten to... and that point and everything that came before culminated in that Saturday morning...

(Continued in next post...)